Books October 2015
What happened at Potsdam
A review of Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe by Michael Neiberg.
Michael Neiberg’s Potsdam is an interesting but somewhat over-ambitious book.1 Its principal arguments seem to be that the Potsdam Conference of 1945 occupied a place in history that was almost analogous to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and that it was rather successful. While this book is enjoyable, I don’t really agree with these main arguments. At the end of World War I, Woodrow Wilson officially classified Great Britain, France, Italy, and, before the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia as “associate powers” to facilitate his pursuit of a non-vengeful peace. He had to threaten to make a separate peace with Germany to get the British, French, and Italians to accept a truncated version of...
A Message from the Editors
Support our crucial work and join us in strengthening the bonds of civilization.
Your donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries.